Commissions charged by the Council of Chatham House with the investigation of
specific problems." These study groups are generally made up of persons who are not
members of the Milner Group, and their reports are frequently published by the Institute.
In 1932 the Rockefeller Foundation gave the Institute a grant of £8000 a year for five
years to advance the study-group method of research. This was extended for five years
more in 1937.
In 1923, Lionel Curtis got a Canadian, Colonel R. W. Leonard, so interested in the
work of the Institute that he bought Lord Kinnaird's house at 10 St. James Square as a
home for the Institute. Since William Pitt had once lived in the building, it was named
"Chatham House," a designation which is now generally applied to the Institute itself.
The only condition of the grant was that the Institute should raise an endowment to yield
at least £10,000 a year for upkeep. Since the building had no adequate assembly hall, Sir
John Power, the honorary treasurer, gave £10,000 to build one on the rear. The building
itself was renovated and furnished under the care of Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, who, like her
late husband but unlike her son, Oliver, was a member of the Milner Group.
The assumption of the title to Chatham House brought up a major crisis within the
Institute when a group led by Professor A. F. Pollard (Fellow of All Souls but not a
member of the Milner Group) opposed the acceptance of the gift because of the financial
commitment involved. Curtis put on an organized drive to mobilize the Group and put the
opposition to flight. The episode is mentioned in a letter from John Dove to Brand, dated
9 October 1923.
This episode opens up the whole question of the financial resources available to the
Institute and to the Milner Group in general. Unfortunately, we cannot examine the
subject here, but it should be obvious that a group with such connections as the Milner
Group would not find it difficult to finance the RIIA. In general, the funds came from the
various endowments, banks, and industrial concerns with which the Milner Group had
relationships. The original money in 1919, only £200, came from Abe Bailey. In later
years he added to this, and in 1928 gave £5000 a year in perpetuity on the condition that
the Institute never accept members who were not British subjects. When Sir Abe died in
1940, the annual
and all the members of Chatham House mourn the loss of their most munificent
Founder." Sir Abe had paid various other expenses during the years. For example, when
the Institute in November 1935 gave a dinner to General Smuts, Sir Abe paid the cost. All
of this was done as a disciple of Lord Milner, for whose principles of imperial policy
Bailey always had complete devotion.
Among the other benefactors of the Institute, we might mention the following. In 1926
the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees (Hichens and Dame Janet Courtney) gave £3000
for books; the Bank of England gave £600; J. D. Rockefeller gave £3000. In 1929
pledges were obtained from about a score of important banks and corporations, promising
annual grants to the Institute. Most of these had one or more members of the Milner
Group on their boards of directors. Included in the group were the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company; the Bank of England; Barclay's Bank; Baring Brothers; the British American
Tobacco Company; the British South Africa Company; Central Mining and Investment
Corporation; Erlangers, Ltd; the Ford Motor Company; Hambros' Bank; Imperial
Chemical Industries; Lazard Brothers; Lever Brothers; Lloyd's; Lloyd's Bank; the
Mercantile and General Insurance Company; the Midland Bank; Reuters; Rothschild and
Sons; Stern Brothers; Vickers-Armstrong; the Westminster Bank; and Whitehall
Securities Corporation.
Since 1939 the chief benefactors of the Institute have been the Astor family and Sir
Henry Price. In 1942 the latter gave £50,000 to buy the house next door to Chatham
House for an expansion of the library (of which E. L. Woodward was supervisor). In the
same year Lord Astor, who had been giving £2000 a year since 1937, promised £3000 a
year for seven years to form a Lord Lothian Memorial Fund to promote good relations
between the United States and Britain. At the same time, each of Lord Astor's four sons
promised £1000 a year for seven years to the general fund of the Institute.
Chatham House had close institutional relations with a number of other similar
organizations, especially in the Dominions. It also has a parallel organization, which was
regarded as a branch, in New York. This latter, the Council on Foreign Relations, was not
founded by the American group that attended the meeting at the Hotel Majestic in 1919,
but was taken over almost entirely by that group immediately after its founding in 1919.
This group was made up of the experts on the American delegation to the Peace
Conference who were most closely associated with J. P. Morgan and Company. The